


and his right hand doth embrace me

by peacefrog



Category: The Exorcist (TV)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-03-13 10:32:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13568742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peacefrog/pseuds/peacefrog
Summary: He’s got one number in his contacts. He hovers over it, hesitates. This is selfish, this ache.





	and his right hand doth embrace me

Tears spill from Marcus’ eyes down onto the quilt, and when they hit the sound is raindrops on pavement. How can something so soft be so loud? His body doubles over in a sob so violent it comes out a gasp. He presses his face into his hands and the tears don’t stop. They don’t stop.

Marcus’ mother was never one for hugs, but when they walked she would give him her touch. Little pats on his little head. Once, her fingers on his cheek. He counted them like hours on his stubby fingers. He saved the crumbs of her kindness and gorged himself with them in the dark hours of her drunken indifference.

His father never hit him, saved it all for mum, but his words cut deep enough to bruise, scarred somehow worse than a fist. Broke him in ways that set all wrong, healed into mangled knobs. Left something rotting behind. Marcus has journeyed his life holding his nose, ignoring the stench, only remembering that its there when he’s forced to pull his hands away. 

Marcus can count the gentleness he’s known on the tips of his fingers. He only needs one hand. The only boy at the orphanage who showed him kindness, and he was gone six months later and Marcus was alone. Father Sean pressing the Host to his tongue. Mouse and her soft lips, the handful of times they’d kissed tucked away in some darkened corner of the abbey, their cheeks burning and their bodies quaking like frightened children. Her hair beneath his fingers after she’d removed her wimple. Peter. Sweet, gentle Peter who tasted like the sea.

Tomas, the first time he’d touched Marcus willingly and with tenderness. And again. And again. Each touch a blessed sacrament, each moment spilling like holy water through his fingers. He takes his other hand and counts each one, running out of fingers, turning to the lines in his hands for the final sum.

And by the time he’d realized he was falling in love he was drowning in it. It came out the point of a bullet, aimed at the head of a gentle father whose life was worth more than the taste of gunpowder in a rotting cabin. _I could have saved him. But you’d have been lost._

_I couldn’t. I couldn’t._

Marcus lies down on the bed and presses his face into the wet spot formed from his weeping. His joints creak when he moves and there’s not a muscle left in his body that doesn’t ache, as if four decades of holding back the dark are collapsing in on him at once. He is finished. He is gone. He can still feel Tomas’ breath coming hot and swift against his neck.

He’s spent a week alone in this motel room, living off bags of crisps and drinking himself blind, but now he’s cried himself sober, and reaching into his pocket for his phone the ache in him is so deep he nearly spills the contents of his stomach all over the bed. He forces himself into a sitting position, he flips open the phone. He’s got one number in his contacts. He hovers over it, hesitates. This is selfish, this ache. A sinful wanting that serves no purpose other than to dull his suffering.

But, God help him, he’s only human. The line bleats out a half dozen times before it’s answered. “Marcus?” Tomas’ voice is sweet as wine on the other end.

“Hope I didn’t wake you,” Marcus croaks, his voice rough from crying and disuse.

“No, I—Is everything alright? Where are you?”

“Not far from Seattle. Just…” Marcus fights back the lump welling in his throat. “Just wanted to hear your voice is all.”

“Marcus.” Tomas holds his name so gently, like prayer, like communion. 

Marcus wipes at his damp eyes. “Are you alright?”

Silence on the other end. Then, “I’m okay.” Then, “That’s a lie.” Then, “I miss you.”

The words crack Marcus down the center of his breastbone and he swears he can hear it. He fists the quilt into his free hand. “Where are you?”

“We haven’t gone far,” says Tomas. “Not far at all.”

—

Marcus has far too many regrets to count on all his fingers and the lines of his hands. On every crevice age has etched around his eyes and mouth. He regrets so many things, but not this. He will never regret this. Not the sound the door makes when he creaks it open on its rusted hinges. Not the revelation of Tomas’ unkempt face on the other side. His wide, red-rimmed eyes. Not the solid mass of him sliding into Marcus’ arms before they’ve even shut the door. The feeling of his hands rumpling the back of Marcus’ shirt.

Marcus kisses him without thinking, for the scent of him has stolen every thought from Marcus’ mind. Lips to his temple, his bearded cheek, the tip of his nose. The warm, wet curve of his mouth. Tomas kisses back with reverence, the whisper of his tongue skirting the seam of Marcus’ lips, then pulls back, burying his face in the hollow of Marcus’ throat.

“You feel so good,” whispers Tomas, and Marcus can taste the heat of him sinking into his throat.

Tomas presses a kiss, feather light, to the throb of his pulse, and Marcus buries his nose in Tomas’ hair, breathes him in, digs his fingers into the solid muscles of his shoulders. They tumble into the bed and lie together fully dressed, clinging to each other without speaking, without kissing. They crush their chests together, as if they’re trying to fuse their hearts. As if they could. And, oh, Marcus knows they have. They have.

“I should have kissed you sooner,” says Marcus.

Tomas is nuzzling his nose to Marcus’ temple. “If I had kissed you, would you have stayed?”

“I don’t know,” says Marcus. “I don’t know.”

Tomas presses his mouth to Marcus’ temple. “Will you stay with me now?”

“I don’t know that it would be wise.”

Their eyes meet. Tomas looks shockingly tired. “That’s not what I asked you.”

“Never been accused of being a wise man,” says Marcus, tracing the ridge of Tomas lips with a finger. “Don’t reckon I should start now.”

Tomas sucks the pad of the finger between his lips, smiles. He nuzzles down into the join of Marcus’ neck and shoulder. He’s got his collar on and Marcus finds the edge of it, runs his fingers underneath, thinks of all the unholy things they might do in this bed.

“I think I would have stayed,” says Marcus after enough time has dripped by to settle Tomas half-asleep in his arms. “Had you kissed me, I’d have been yours.”

Tomas smiles lazily against Marcus’ neck. “I’ve kissed you now.” He kisses Marcus’ neck gently. “Does that make you mine?”

“Yes,” Marcus gasps out, feeling holy. “I’m yours.”


End file.
